VGCC Art Student’s Painting Selected To Hang In Raleigh
Pam Danzer, a student in the Continuing Education art class at Vance-Granville Community College’s Franklin County Campus, has received a singular honor.
An oil painting Danzer did of her daughter, Jenny Lynn, has been selected to hang for a year in the Caswell Building, the offices in Raleigh of the North Carolina Community College System. Each year, Martin Lancaster, president of the state’s Community College System, selects art and crafts works by faculty, staff and students from the system’s 59 schools to decorate the halls and public rooms of the headquarters building.
The painting by Danzer, who lives in the Seven Paths community of Franklin County, was the only piece by someone from Vance-Granville Community College selected in 2002.
A native of South Dakota, Danzer started painting portraits in pastels when she was a young girl and studied with several noted artists in her home state. She has done portraits by commission and has worked in design and photography in New York and New Jersey.
After moving to Franklin County, she joined the art class at Franklin Campus taught by Mary Harris of Louisburg. Danzer paints a variety of subjects but says she prefers painting people. “But it can be frustrating if the picture has to look like a real person,” she said.
Danzer said she loves being in the class at the Franklin Campus. “It’s like a family here,” she said of the class. “We have a wide variety of people here, some of whom have been in the class 25 years.”
Harris provides instruction in all mediums – oil, watercolor, pastels, acrylic, and pen and ink. “Our students are painting at all different levels of expertise, and they are doing everything from folk art to impressionist painting,” Harris said.
The class recently had a birthday party for its oldest member, Peggy Perry, when she turned 90.
Class members are looking forward to a symposium on March 5 by Mary Harris’ niece, Tricia Hastings, a successful artist in Nashville, Tenn.
The art class meets on Tuesdays, with morning and afternoon sessions, in the new Biotechnology building at the campus on N.C. 56 west of Louisburg. Anyone interested in joining the class should call the Franklin County Campus at 496-1567 to learn when the next class will begin.
HONORED ARTIST – Pam Danzer of Franklin County works on a painting of her daughter, Jenny Lynn, and her fiancé in the art class at Vance-Granville Community College’s Franklin County Campus. A portrait Danzer did of her daughter has been selected to hang during 2002 in the offices of the North Carolina Community College System in Raleigh.
